


Excerpts from the Research Notes of Mykew Gregorovitch

by amorremanet



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Academia, Dragons, Epistolary, Ficlet Collection, Gen, Headcanon, Hungarian Horntail - Freeform, Original Character(s), Originally Posted on Tumblr, Other, Phoenixes, Research, Swedish Short-Snout, Wandlore, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-06
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-29 08:16:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8482231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amorremanet/pseuds/amorremanet
Summary: Exactly what it says on the tin.





	

**Author's Note:**

> No, seriously: this ficlet collection does exactly what it says on the tin. I was writing up wandlore headcanons for my own reference in other projects and on my RP blogs, I drifted into writing them in-character as Gregorovitch because it was fun and easier to work them into things that way, and I wanted to have a place to collect them all together. So, here we are.
> 
> Some of the references in here build on headcanons from other tumblr blogs, like the Monster Blog of Monsters, Postmodern Potter Compendium, Amortentia Fashion, and the Lives and Lies of Wizards. For the sake of convenience and easy reference, these are all linked in-text.

As a rule, I have found that dragon heartstring wands are the most variable of all wands in their temperaments, differing greatly from breed to breed, and I believe that there are several reasons for that.

First among them is the fact that dragons simply offer wandmakers much more in the way of choice. They come to us in so many different breeds, with such disparate personalities among them — even individual members of the same breed can have vastly different temperaments from each other, when one gets better acquainted with them, as has been reported by dragonologists, such as Germany’s Odilie Bösch and Britain’s young Charlie Weasley, as well as by more general magizoologists, such as Britain’s Newton Scamander — that it cannot help but affect the very natures of the wands we make with their heartstrings, often on the deepest and subtlest levels.

This is not to diminish the importance of the donating creature’s unique identity to the character and inner emotional life of the wands made with their hair, feathers, or heartstrings. Factors such as the age and sex of the contributing creature have been written on at length for centuries, and in recent years, wandmakers and scholars of wandlore have expanded our scope to include examinations of how a wand’s temperament can be affected by many more aspects of a creature’s life. These include but are not limited to: the creature’s dealings with humans, their bonds with other creatures (both of their own breed and not), their emotional state at the time of donation, and whether they were found in the wild or kept in captivity.

For example, the gifted young Japanese wandmaker, Fukamori Natsuko, has written an excellent treatise comparing the temperaments of wands she made with [the feathers of a frost phoenix](http://themonsterblogofmonsters.tumblr.com/post/112085928979/frost-phoenix-more-accurately-called-the-dark), both before and after it received the Dementor’s Kiss ( _Understanding the Frost Phoenix: Studies in an Enigma of Modern Wandlore_ , Mahoutokoro Academic Press, 1993). As Fukamori reports, all of the fine bird’s feathers created equally fine and powerful wands, but those made with the frost phoenix’s feathers had a more marked tendency toward moodiness, fickleness, and a particularly cruel potency, even when paired with steady woods, like elm and cypress, or woods known for their wisdom and integrity, such as alder, beech, poplar, laurel, cherry, cedar, English oak, and black walnut.

As invaluable as Fukamori’s findings are, one need not even look to such extreme cases for illustration of how different wands can be based on the personalities of the creatures whose magical by-products go into them. As similar as phoenix feather wands tend to be in temperament, due to the aloofness and independent spirit that is nearly ubiquitous among those fine creatures, one still finds peculiar quirks among them, even small ones, that arise from the temperaments of the individual birds. I, myself, once crafted a very fine phoenix feather wand that proved quite difficult to place with its proper owner, not because it refused to work for anyone to whom I tried to match it, but because it was, itself, too eager to be placed into someone’s hands and given a home and master. Whenever I gave it to a young patron coming to me for their first wand, it would attempt to spark and show itself functional, sometimes with disastrous results.

For quite some time, I attributed this character not to the wand’s core, but to the fact that I had fashioned it from the wood of a fine hawthorn tree that had long been planted on the estate of Germany’s Pureblooded Schirmer family, who are as notable for their artists and philanthropists as they are for their studies of Dark and forbidden arts, and their members who supported Gellert Grindelwald during his war of conquest. Mistakenly, I thought that the wand was so desperate to be of use to someone because the already contradictory nature of hawthorn wood wands had been influenced by the Schirmers’ legacy of ambition, innovation, and dedication, leaving this particular wand with an impulse to do great things and prove itself “truly worthy.”

It was not until I had finally placed the wand in the right hands — which it showed us by not simply sending off sparks when it found the young witch it had been waiting for, but by nearly starting a fire in my shop from the excitement of having finally come home — that I considered the influence of dear Salome, the phoenix who had kindly permitted me to use her feathers.

On my next visit out to her family, the famous Reichlings who raise and protect all magical birds at their home in the Swiss Alps, I noted that this fine creature seemed somewhat more spirited than she had on my previous visits. As young Mistress Seraphina Reichling explained to me, Salome had been bonded to her family for generations, and in particular to her great-grandmother, Verena. After the good woman had died, Salome refused to leave the family whom she now saw as her own, but she had been somewhat adrift, without a particular human to grace with her allegiance. Some few months before my visit, however, she had finally found a kindred spirit in Mistress Seraphina’s young niece, Leonora, which had brought dear Salome back to a certain spiritedness that no one in the family had seen since Verena’s passing.

Indeed, this change in Salome’s spirits showed in the four wands that I made with Salome’s feathers after that particular visit: all of them were clever, crafty, bold, and good-humored, but refused to even be held by anyone but the young masters to whom they were eventually paired. As this case aptly illustrates, all our general rules find their exceptions eventually, and no wandmaker truly worthy of their materials would dare treat any, “rule” as though it is immutable.

However, we still benefit from discussing the trends that emerge amongst wands based on the materials that we use to make them, and it is, in my experience, a simple fact that dragon heartstrings create the widest variety of temperaments, and a dragon’s breed affects a wand’s personality every bit as much as the creature’s own unique charms. Canadian wandmaker, Margarethe Linwood’s, recent experiments in combining the heartstrings of different dragons show this quite well, as she has found that these wands seem split between two minds, possessed of deadly potency but ultimately, hard to bond with and harness to their full potential because they are so often at war with themselves (“Can Different Creatures’ Gifts Be Combined In Wand Cores?” _Modern Wandlore_ 107, no. 3, Aug. 1995). Commonalities exist among the breeds, to be certain, but there are just as many aspects of wands from different breeds that make each breed’s wands wholly unique from those of every other.

I have never found completely similar temperaments among, for example, Hungarian Horntail wands and Swedish Short-Snout wands. While both breeds create wands that are as powerful and flamboyant as my colleague, Garrick Ollivander, describes all dragon heartstring wands, I believe that any experienced and sensitive wandmaker could tell them apart, even without any prior knowledge of a wand’s composition. The subtle differences are numerous enough to merit their own monograph, but the major distinguishing feature between these dragons’ wands is a matter of boldness, restraint, and how, precisely, they bond with their masters.

The depth of the bonds that Horntail and Short-Snout wands form with their masters cannot be understated. Of all the different breeds of dragon, I have found that these two create the most loyal wands (with the Chinese Fireball being in a close third place), despite their reputation for fickleness. This, I believe, is a side-effect of poor handling by wizards who crumbled when their wands attempted to push them, and blamed the wand, rather than examining themselves. In truth, wands from the Short-Snout and the Horntail are so loyal to their original masters that they nearly undermine Garrick Ollivander’s assertion that a dragon heartstring wand can be won by any sufficient display of power used to best the wizard who carries one. Several of these wands have “died” with their masters, rather than live on and allow another witch or wizard to use their powers.

However, as noted in work by Fukamori (“Unexamined Peculiarities of Swedish Short-Snout Wands,” _Modern Wandlore_ 103, no. 4, Nov. 1991), Helena Scamander (daughter of Newton; “The Question of Fidelity in Dragon Heartstring Wands,” _Modern Wandlore_ 100, no. 1, Feb. 1988), myself, and Gervaise Ollivander (my contemporary’s own father), the Swedish Short-Snout tends to create wands that are more resolute and more even-tempered wands than most dragons. They are no less powerful than wands made with other breeds’ heartstrings, but they are hard to sway, they perform more reliably if with less panache, and their “flamboyance” is often so restrained that it can hardly be so called. Short-Snout wands perform best when their carrier employs forethought, wisdom, temperance, and patience, and they bend only rarely to the whims and fancies of the inner fire that I have seen in all mages who carry dragon heartstring wands.

True, the Short-Snout wand _does_ require this passion from its carrier; this cannot be denied. Even with masters who keep their loves and cares close to their chests or who might be quieter than others, I have personally never encountered a dragon heartstring wand that does not need a certain fervor in its carrier. But where most other dragons’ heartstrings find their masters in fiery go-getters and unshakable devotees, the Short-Snout wand values a passion that manifests itself in care, commitment, and dedication than in impulsiveness or zeal.

Moreover, Short-Snout wands are fiercely protective of their masters, sometimes even holding themselves back, if they feel that the wizard in possession of them may be attempting to push them in dangerous directions. Even when paired with the more “humorous” woods, like dogwood, or more eager and energetic wands, such as blackthorn, sycamore, and yew, the Short-Snout’s heartstrings maintain a sense of almost parental devotion to their carrier. The Short-Snout wand is one that will allow a master to fully access their inner power, and can be swayed to let them make their own mistakes and learn from them, but will attempt to direct a master down paths that better reflect their true desires, values, and talents, whatever these may be.

The Hungarian Horntail, on the other hand, creates by far the boldest wands that I have ever encountered, even among the most potent phoenix feather wands and the unicorn wands who found themselves in the hands of daring or dauntless mages. More than any other breed of dragon, the Horntail creates a wand that will demands the best from its master, always looking for ways to push the one who carries it to new heights and in new directions. Horntail wands are not especially flamboyant, falling more in the middle of the spectrum, but this is because they prize craft and raw power over showmanship. This is not to say that a Horntail wand cannot be used with flourish, merely that the Horntail wand channels more of its carrier’s energies into making spellwork effective, rather than making it pretty. In the hands of a master who can tame it into a sense of aesthetics, a Horntail wand becomes even more dangerous, as it has found a partner powerful enough to meet its expectations and push the wand in return.

Before his unfortunate disappearance from public life, the British author Gilderoy Lockhart happened to catch my attention based on claims he made about his wand in his 1992 autobiography, _Magical Me_. Normally, I wouldn’t have bothered, but my young niece Radula, herself the partner of a Horntail wand, asked for my thoughts on his statement that he had been paired with one as well. Even prior to the revelation of his plagiarism and intellectual laziness, this seemed far-fetched to me. While Lockhart certainly had the drive that a Horntail wand usually looks for in its master, but too many of his tales rang hollow. Horntail wands can find homes with masters who are conflicted or prone to lying, but I have never seen one successfully paired with someone who exaggerates their accomplishments as much as Lockhart did.

My suspicions about Lockhart’s wand were correct: Garrick Ollivander himself told me that he had sold Lockhart a wand cored with the heartstrings of an Ukrainian Ironbelly. It is unfortunate that such a wand found its partner in someone who didn’t appreciate it, and seems to have taken his wand for granted because the donating dragon was not glamorous enough for his sensibilities, as the Ukrainian Ironbelly’s heartstrings create wands of immense potential. By claiming to have tamed a Horntail wand, Lockhart showed that, by my eyes, he deserved neither his proper wand nor the one that he wished to have instead.

Even saying that anyone can ever truly, “tame” a Horntail wand is, at best, contentious among wandmakers. The term itself has come under general scrutiny since the mid-1980’s, with some wandmakers asserting that it is better not to think of wands being, “tamed” by the wizards who carry them, but of them establishing mutually beneficial relationships. The question of anyone, “taming” a wand is even more debatable with Horntail wands, which are some of the most headstrong and individualistic I have ever encountered. This is why I will wait longer when attempting to pair a child with a Horntail wand: in most cases, they always react more slowly than wands with other cores, especially in the hands of younger mages. Unless a child is truly remarkable, in either their drive or their potential power, the Horntail wand will spend more time feeling them out before it decides whether or not to react.

When a Horntail wand finds a mage that it can respect and develop an affinity for, it will still hold out until they are certain that they have found a companion with potential and determination. Where the Short-Snout wand is slow to win because they wish to truly _know_ the witch or wizard carrying them, Horntail wands are more often slow to bond with their masters because they wish to see their masters prove themselves worthy of the wands’ gifts and potential. Even when a mage wins a Horntail wand, the wand will expect to be treated as more than a simple tool and respected as, effectively, an equal partner.

Winning a Horntail wand’s loyalty and respect is best described as a process, and many mages who are paired with Horntail wands early in life come to find that they are called upon to continually renew their commitment to and love for their wands. If a Horntail wand feels that its master has underutilized its gifts, or that its potential is being wasted on frivolous pursuits, it will develop doubts, both of its master’s passion, and of how much the mage respects it. Only rarely have I seen a Horntail wand bond with a master on their first meeting, and in each of those cases, the team’s affinity for each other solidified so quickly due to two important factors:

  * First, the new master’s mettle and cleverness making itself so obvious, so quickly (such as through a particularly skillful display of spellcraft, or attempting to use magics far above their current capabilities and refusing to accept their own limitations), that their wand could not help but be impressed and won to their side;  
  

  * and Second, a certain character or life circumstances that draw out the protectiveness of the Horntail wand, creating in it a sense that it has found someone of great potential and inner power, who needs a strong, supportive presence in their life and, perhaps, a friend who can help them to fully awaken, access, and actualize the dynamic talents and potency within themselves.



My use of the term, “protectiveness” to characterize Hungarian Horntail wands may seem strange to those who are only casually acquainted with the creatures, as they have a much better known reputation for danger, aggression, and even for viciousness and cruelty. However, as dragonologists and wandmakers alike have known for generations — and as Charlie Weasley has incontrovertibly shown in his controversial new monograph, _The Truth of the Dread Queen: Reevaluating the Hungarian Horntail_ (Obscurus Books, 1996) — Horntails seem cruel or even evil to humans, first and foremost, because we can become their prey if we are not careful. Looking at a Horntail on her own terms, we can see a beast possessed of what we might call incredible love, both for the hatchlings that Horntail mothers will defend even to their own death, and for more intangible concepts, such as freedom (which, as Mr. Weasley points out, can make Horntails difficult to keep contained).

This same vigilant spirit can be seen in the wands cored with Horntails’ heartstrings, both in how they protect themselves (such as challenging their masters to live up to the wands’ potential and achieve great things) and in how they try to protect the ones who carry them. Horntail wands are some of the hardest to win from their masters under any circumstances, and plenty of them have found their way into the hands of young mages going through trials and tribulations. Victims of abuse and neglect often appeal to Horntail Wands, as do orphans and mages who have survived terrible illness, of the sort that Fukamori would call, “their own bodies turning against them.”

Despite these trends and despite the claims of some of my colleagues, it is impossible to predict with any accuracy whether a Horntail wand seeks out a master who matches or contrasts with its own personality. Horntail wands are so selective with their partners that making such statements misses the point of what these wands look for entirely. Some Horntail wand-carriers will match their wands’ temperaments almost exactly; others will be so vastly different from the wand that chooses them, that they might as well be opposites; still others will find a balance of these two extremes — but everyone chosen by a Horntail wand will have _something unique_ about them that the wand feels out and wants to push them to develop. It may be easily visible magical power, personal resolve, cleverness and ingenuity, deep reserves of potential clouded over by inner conflict and self-doubt, or anything else. But something about the Horntail-carrier will be distinctive in ways that their wand recognizes and rewards with loyalty.

Even with these themes, however, I cannot stress enough that the general rules of wandlore are by no means fixed, and that dragon heartstring wands are some of the most variable in existence, easily influenced not only by the choice of breed and wood but also by the circumstances that they endure with their masters. Common wisdom holds, for example, that the wand cored with a Chinese Fireball’s heartstrings will be powerful, flashy, and loyal, but incapable of any subtle magic. Yet, some of the most subtle magic I have encountered was performed by a young Auror, carrying thirteen-and-a-half inches of sprightly ash wood, cored with the heartstrings of a feisty male Fireball. Its carrier had performed some subtle magic for years, despite his incredible self-doubt, and came more fully into his capacity for it after he met his partner — another young male Auror, carrying a wand of hawthorn with a Horntail core. In turn, the first Auror brought out a latent sense of panache in both his lover and his lover’s wand.

By contrast, one finds little such diversity among unicorns hair wands, in large part due to the reluctance of wandmakers to use hair from the [different types of unicorn found outside of Europe](http://themonsterblogofmonsters.tumblr.com/post/145176256956/unicorn-type-classification-there-are-around), and the many commonalities in temperaments among European Unicorns, regardless of where they make their home. Some of my colleagues have observed a “wildness” or a, “sense of humor” among wands made with the hairs of unicorns from the Black Forest, as opposed to the “calmer” and, “more reserved” temperament one finds in unicorns living in the Forbidden Forest of Hogwarts Castle in Scotland.

Even so, wands from both of these groups bear the fidelity, steadiness, and deceptive appearance of simplicity that unicorn wands are famous for, with little ostensible difference and more similarities than not among the subtler, easily overlooked peculiarities.

**Author's Note:**

> [Originally posted here](http://bartyscrouchjr.tumblr.com/headcanons).


End file.
